A tornado touched down in Pico Rivera, California early Thursday morning, forecasters confirmed, as a brutal rain storm batters Southern California.

A tornado touched down in a Los Angeles County neighborhood early Thursday morning, a rare event in Southern California. With 85 mph winds, the Oxnard tornado knocked down trees and damaged homes and cars in Pico Rivera at around 3:15 a.

A rare sight in California - a tornado - slammed a Pico Rivera neighborhood early Thursday during the state’s latest storm. The tornado, which happened between 3 and 4 a.m., lasted two minutes and moved at 85 mph in the city in southeastern Los Angeles County,

Incoming heavy rain from an atmospheric river-fueled storm that slammed into the West Coast early Wednesday is threatening mudslides and debris flows in Southern California and has already prompted evacuations in the Los Angeles area.

California braced for the arrival of a massive storm on Wednesday, evacuating residents in areas at risk of mudslides and debris flows.

The first storm, said Scott Kleebauer, a meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's weather prediction center, "is kind of meandering off the Southern California coast, and will slowly be pushing inland by later this afternoon and this evening.